Disclaimer: I own nothing; everything belongs to its rightful owners.
AN: Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and/or review my stories, it really means the world to me! And a BIG special thank you goes to the amazingly talented purpleplasticpurse for beta reading!
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The View Is Different Now
(The Color In Anything/ November 2006)
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"Feels a lot like deja vu."
"Does it?" Emily muses with a smile, slightly turning around to meet Aaron's gaze.
She's leaning on the railing of her balcony, wearing nothing but his button-down, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette.
Yeah, they did that before.
"The view is different," Aaron admits, stepping up right next to her. His eyes linger on the Capitol building in the distance and it's not hard to figure out what is bothering him.
She could try and lie and tell him that her mother's still paying her bills. Surely for him she's still the spoiled, reckless girl he met on his first assignment.
But Emily hasn't been that girl in years and she can't go back to being her either. Yet the look on Aaron's face makes clear that she has to come up with something fast.
"I inherited some money when my grandfather died," she ends up saying and it's not even a lie.
"Looks more like a fortune to me," Aaron states with a frown and Emily feels the sudden urge to tell him the bloody truth.
Not that it would make that much of a difference. In fact she's almost certain he would judge her even more if he knew what she'd been really doing the last few years.
"So that's why you were in Italy then? Spending your family's money?"
Emily nods, smoke curling between her lips and into the freezing air. "What else would I be doing there?"
She turns her head slowly, her dark eyes leveling his.
"You acted like you were someone else," he notes and there's an accusation in his tone that leaves Emily wondering if he's only following protocol or if he's just not prepared to ask what he really wants to know.
"Seemed pretty reasonable with your pregnant wife right there."
There's the hint of disappointment flashing in his eyes, before he looks away from her and back at the illuminated skyline.
An unpleasant silence settles between them, heavy, and filled with all the things neither one of them wants to point out. Something has changed and Emily finds herself wondering if Clyde may have been right.
"Why did you leave without saying goodbye?" Aaron finally asks her the question she's been dreading all night.
Guiding her cigarette back to her lips, Emily shrugs. "I don't do goodbye's."
Maybe that's as close to the truth, as they will ever get.
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Disclaimer: I own nothing; everything belongs to its rightful owners.